Experience Now
Aaron "Dobler" Goldstein FORGOTTEN ISLAND “had me at disembowelment.” And I cannot believe this movie failed to find the box office it deserved, because it’s one of the ten best films I’ve seen this year. After a decade of sequels and brand extensions getting shoved into every theater, Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado, the team behind PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH, built an original story based on Philippine mythology, and it hits so much harder than its $12.8 million opening weekend would suggest.
At its heart are Jo and Raissa, two best friends and misfits who bring different things to the friendship. The reason this works is that Crawford and Mercado drew on their decades-long friendship, and you can feel that it’s lived-in rather than written, which is what keeps the emotional stakes feeling so real when the fantasy goes bonkers.
FORGOTTEN ISLAND plays like a mashup of SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE, DUDE, WHERE’S MY CAR?, and some of the best anime ever made, and that blend has no business working as well as it does. The world of Nakali is built with so much culture, intuition, and heart that I wanted to live in it, and the villain, The Dreaded Manananggal, is genuinely scary. My four-year-old would 100% have nightmares if he saw it.
I saw it in a theater with two other people total in the theater. That emptiness saddened me, since the film deserves to be seen with a large group of people that can laugh and cry together on this extraordinary adventure. I remember in the mid-90s when A GOOFY MOVIE flopped. It was set in a single-parent household with a father and son living under one roof. That film soon became a legendary home-video success that people still celebrate in 2026. I’m hoping that FORGOTTEN ISLAND does the same once it’s on streaming.
Final Thought: “No matter how far apart, FORGOTTEN ISLAND will always exist for its fans… if we remember.”
It’s in theaters now.
